Lollapalooza and great expectations

Grant Park fest needs an identity

July 17, 2005|By Greg Kot, Tribune music critic

Any resemblance between the Lollapalooza that will invade Grant Park next weekend and the traveling alternative-rock festival that debuted in 1991 are purely coincidental. And, frankly, Perry Farrell -- the former Jane's Addiction singer who put Lollapalooza on the map -- sounds a little wistful about it.

"I have a feeling that music is not as important to young people as it was to the previous generation," he says of this year's festival, in which he continues to play an advisory role. "I'm not saying that to pick on this generation. I think it is a result of the business of music, and the music business being handicapped by downloading [of free Internet music files]. So they're figuring out ways to sell music to kids, 14 and under basically, who aren't downloading as much as older kids. That changes the whole landscape of music, and the music has gotten worse."

Farrell would like to think of Lollapalooza as an exception to that decline, a beacon of "authentic" music in a sea of what he calls "payola bands" with no longevity. But it was only a year ago that the singer was resigned to possibly giving up Lollapalooza for good when the festival's entire tour was canceled because of weak ticket sales. Now he and his original partners, including the William Morris booking agency, have licensed the Lollapalooza name to a Texas-based corporation, Capital Sports and Entertainment, which has been booking and promoting the Austin City Limits Festival since 2002. Together, they've scaled down Lollapalooza to a single-city destination festival along the lines of Austin City Limits, Coachella in California or Bonnaroo in Tennessee.

Corporate feel

Lollapalooza '05 is shaping up as just another big rock festival with an iconic brand name, promoted by a corporation with no ties to the original event. That may say more about the state of rock in 2005 than the vision, or lack of, displayed by the promoters. Though Farrell remains the event's most visible spokesman, the booking was done by Capital Sports' Charles Attal, who until now had worked exclusively in Texas.

"I didn't want to look back to the original Lollapalooza," Attal says. "It has so much great history, but I didn't want to dig back. I wanted fresh legs, a retooling."

Whether the retooled Lollapalooza can become a cultural landmark like the original remains to be seen. It could become a turning point moment for Chicago's lakefront, the debut of what might yet become a long-running Grant Park institution. Right now, however, it's a festival still in search of its identity.

"What is hot now is what we're going after, what the kids are thinking these days," Attal says. "We're trying to create the model that we have down here [with the Austin City Limits Festival], which is more of a family environment."

A "Kidzapoolaza" side stage has been set aside for children. On the five main stages, their parents will find at least two bands who performed on the original Lollapalooza (Primus, Dinosaur Jr.), and a few more who could have (the Pixies, Weezer, Liz Phair). The rest of the lineup, heavily skewed toward guitar rock, is a smorgasboard of club and theater-level bands, but no genuine must-sees. The buzz about this year's Lollapalooza is more about its setting -- a rare major rock show on Chicago's lakefront -- than its lineup.

In like a lion

When Lollapalooza launched in '91, it rolled in like a tsunami on a placid lake. It was ostensibly built around the farewell tour by Jane's Addiction. But that summer, as Jane's and a hodgepodge of seemingly incompatible underground acts -- the Butthole Surfers, the Rollins Band, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Living Colour, Nine Inch Nails, Ice-T -- wended across the country, Lollapalooza was transformed. It became a gathering place for a community of music fans that until then didn't have much of an identity. It was a place for tattooed, nose-ringed skateboarders and their green-haired friends, a daily hangout for 20,000 misfits and their favorite cult bands.

By summer's end, something called "alternative rock" was on the mainstream radar. Just as the Monterrey Pop Festival in 1967 had alerted the record companies to the moneymaking potential of rock, Lollapalooza proved just how lucrative underground music could be as it consistently played to audiences of 20,000 or more in cities across the United States. Punk was no longer a pariah -- which proved both a blessing and a curse. A few weeks after the first Lollapalooza tour ended, Nirvana's "Nevermind" would be released and eventually hit No. 1 on the Billboard album chart. Rock with a sonic edge and a skeptical attitude broke through on commercial radio.

It didn't last, as a parade of clones and second-tier bands were marketed as "alternative" alongside genuinely inspired oddities such as the Melvins, the Jesus Lizard and the Flaming Lips, all of whom scored improbable major-label deals. But for a few heady years, the freaks felt like they were in charge.